Wednesday, 28 January 2009

English happy with Scots funding - they must be "confused" say SNP.

Some mirth in Room Two of the Press Gallery, the Scottish and Welsh room, on the (belated) arrival of the SNP response to the British Social Attitudes Survey, trailed in the news last night as showing "a third of people in England thought that Scotland receives more than its fair share of cash".

Pete Wishart MP, the SNP’s Westminster Constitutional Affairs Spokesperson, thinks this piece of non-news shows "a great deal of confusion exists in England about how Scotland is governed".

I know this won't please the Simon Heffers or the Daily Mail newsdesk but if two thirds of English people think that Scotland receives a fair share of UK cash doesn’t that count as an expression of Anglo satisfaction, not confusion?

"The reality is that Scotland more than pays its own way in the UK," states Mr Wishart. "That is proved by the most recent analysis in the Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland (GERS) report, which shows that Scotland had a budget surplus of £837 million in 2006-07, compared to a UK deficit of £4.3 billion."

Shh Pete, or you might persuade the other third of English people that they’re getting too good a deal from the Union.

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Torcuil Crichton

Is the old telephone number for Scotland Yard and just about the right handle for the Westminster Editor of the Scottish Daily Record. I mostly patrol Westminster but this is my personal blog, taking in everything from my native Isle of Lewis to the Isle of Dogs in London. You can read my journalism at www.dailyrecord.co.uk and you can contact me directly on torcuil@gmail dot com